Kimono
The Kimono
I was joining a ship in another town; mother followed me the railway station,
which was not far as we lived nearby? From the train I looked down at her and
saw what I had never seen, a woman with unkempt hair, in an old overcoat
with missing buttons and shoes that needed heeling. There were many other
people on the platform, but she stood out looking like a bag woman.
I felt ashamed and guilty for feeling embarrassed. When returning I will have
money to buy her a new coat, shoes and send her to a hairdresser, I thought.
The train moved forward and I waved as long as I could see her.
A year later my ship had just left Tokyo, bound for the Panama canal, when
the radio operator came into the galley with a cable, I could see in his face he
had no glad tiding. I sat in my cabin grieving, took out the kimono I had bought
her it was made of silk and was as soft as a mother’s embrace; and I cried.
A knock on my door it was the captain who said: “No time for tears son, crew
needs to be fed and you are the cook.“ That night and many nights thereafter
I was lulled asleep by the ship’s steady heartbeat.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Sea Life
A seafarer’s life
I didn’t want to work in a factory and get my hands dirty,
be locked inside grey walls six days a week, as everyone
else in my street was, so I got a job selling books from
house to house; only I was so terrible shy.
The first doorbell I rang was also my last, the woman who
opened the door was kind enough but she didn’t want to
buy anything, I nearly cried, and didn’t have the courage
to press my finger on another doorbell.
Selling pictures of farms, taken from a helicopter, was
my next job, out all day taking the bus to the countryside
only the day I got there it was raining I had no umbrella
and the first farm I came to was also my last.
I took a course training to be a waiter, in white jacket
and golden epaulet I looked handsome, so my sister said.
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The Truant
The Truant
Trying to flee Christmas I opened a wrong door and
fell from sky into a glossy stygian lagoon, swam to
its northern shore and saw trees dismal graveyard,
petrified and silent trunks lit up by hazy moonlight.
I walked to the lake’s eastern shore and witnessed
the easy birth of a day; a deer chastely drank blue
water when a brown bear came out of the forest
attacking me. I jumped into the lake the bear too
jumped in, a better swimmer, but as it was going to
catch me, I ducked, swam up behind it, mounted
the beast- like a cowboy- and gripped my fingers on
the liberal skin folds of its fat neck. Howling angry
the bear swam in circles but couldn’t shake me off,
when it beat swam for shore I let go, the poor brute
crawled ashore and tired scuttled into the woods.
I followed a barely visible track and came to a town
where kind people gave me food (hotcakes, honey
and bacon,) a bath and a bed in a green room. I slept
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British Election
British election
Three men in suit on a podium, they have no shame, all three want to rule
Britain and they tell lies and promise things they cannot keep. Since we are
Serfs at heart we vote for the most aristocratic one forgetting when the loaf
is cut, they keep the slices we get the crumbs. All three men agree about
the war In Afghanistan and it most continue to win the peace and they extol
the brave soldiers who in the end die from an unwinnable war. I should have
been sorry for the soldiers they are mostly un educated working class, and like
the idea of fighting the Taliban. Should they die which they do too often.
There is a great funeral no one does a military send off like the Brits. To end
this war we have to talk to the Taliban, and when we do the suffering of mums
and the deaths of young men have come to nothing. Three well tailored men
on a podium, sing from the same music sheet, produced by newspapers and
everything will be as before in a country where people are made to feel
ashamed of being working class, being told of dependency culture and working
hard when there is no work, and be told how lazy they are.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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The Clairvoyant
The Clairvoyant
Over a cold Nordic coast a seagull flies and sees
the bay between the island and the coastal town.
40 minutes each way by ferry. It’s an old gull and
has a blind eye and one leg; yes, you are right,
a real pirate I used to know years ago, it knew me
too when I was a cook on that a ferry boat, sat on
the mast and waited for me to throw scraps of
food into the sea shrieking harshly, it is the gulls
way of wishing me well.
This year has no ice in the bay, there was a time
when the ferry was icebound islander folk had to
walk on ice across to get to the shops, they still
do [there is a bridge now,) ferry been sold and
is plying its trade on the delta of Bangladesh.
The day is clear I’m a seagull and can see the past
lucid as the day it is lucky that I can’t see the future,
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No Butter?
No Butter? (when a country practice monopoly)
“Butter, the chef said, I can’t fry a snitzel without butter? If I use margarine
it gets too salty and tastes like whale, if I use olive oil, it gets a Portuguese
flavour, a snitzel is Austrian. How can you fry an egg without using butter,
one loses the taste of clover and rural idyll, farm yards and chickens looking
for worms? ” ” Sorry the restaurant manager said, but we have no butter,
you gotta use margarine and anyway the guests are not chefs they will not
notice the difference.”The chef looked aghast, put down his ladle and said:
“You can’t mean that, has all my work comes to nothing? ” Took off his apron,
had tears in his eyes, ready to walk out into the cold night and not return.
“Hang on the manager said, without you I can’t run this place, it is the caring
way you prepare food that our guests like you they know there is a butter
shortage, but they don’t mind as long as they now you are the chef.”
Mollified the cook took his apron back on lifted his ladle and said, “Ok, but
see if you can get some butter even if you have to buy it from the Danes.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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A Female Pedophiliac
Mother's best friend a shapely woman with a sexy smile
I was fifteen and went to her house with a message-
something about a wedding where mother was cooking-
and she seduced me... Can't remember it clearly only that
I was trembling by the sight of her nudeness.
She did the rest, the ecstasy and the enormous newness
of pleasure was like a dream come true... we made love
and I died every time in her ravenous encirclement.
When I left her house I was a person bewitched but had
the sense to worry what mother would say by me being so
late, but I told her I had met some friends and we had
gone down to the park feeding the ducks and talking to
the girls... Next time I saw her I went beetroot not sure
if I had had a dream, but when mother went into the kitchen
to make coffee she told me to come back to her house in
the evening...and I did. But someone spoke, when mother
knew she called her a whore and never spoke to her again.
Yet my loins craved her I was a burning flame and we met in
fields and woods... till I had to go to sea as a galley boy.
When I saw again she was quite old was old, perhaps forty five,
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The Hunter
The Hunter
The vale, a mini grand canyon, most of
the time, cloaked in the opaque fog of
obscurity, was clear today. The floor of
the dale is flat and scattered with large
boulders, crippled bushes, weedy, slimy
plants and an imponderable, stillness that
follows sins of wilful nonappearance.
Was here, with my dog Stella, to look
for and hunt rabbits, by a boulder I saw
a rabbit bigger then a red fox, I shot it
in the head with my 22 calibre rifle;
still convulsing when I came up to it,
kicked it to death with the rifle butt and
saw it was not a gregarious mammal.
Hundreds of them, hairy monster rats
looking at me from every boulder and
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Cultivated Is My Valley
Cultivated Is My Valley
Peaceful is the landscape and the lane that meanders
amongst olive trees, stone walls neatly divide the land
a bit for everyone, but not enough to make you rich.
Here dogs only bark at night have cowardly, yellow eyes
there is no wolf left in these subjugated canines.
In Stockholm when spring comes ice shards fall off roof
tops, split brains in half, gore on snow. On paradise
islands too one has to look out for falling coco- nuts
they can so easily kill a man; but here, in my valley, only
petals of the almond tree flower fall.
Birdsongs and breeze that caresses olive trees, now that’s
peace, ok, so should I not be happy as I contemplate
a carob tree? I see a woman bending down, weeding her
potato field, clouds on the sky are as soft as the mustachio
on a Romanian girl’s upper lip. All this herald peace so
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Hasty Marriage
Burden of a Hasty Marriage.
He saw her at the cafe she a cup of cacao and eating a cream cake,
he had a sandwich with cheese and ham. She looked up and smiled,
he knew she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Shy, as he was, still found the courage to get up and walk over to her
table and ask if he could eat his modest sandwich with her; she said
yes and they sat there in silence, just eating. Dimly he knew he had to
say something, but couldn’t but couldn’t find the words so he ate
the cup and saucer, the table cloth, serviettes and crumbs of her cake,
when he began eating the table she told him to stop. Ice broken he said
he loved her, she said she loved him, not to waste time they got married
in the afternoon. Found a hotel room and stayed in bed for a fortnight.
Made love in every position one could think of; they even forgot to eat.
Entwined they slept until a knock on the door, something about paying
for the room. For him was a welcomed distraction, got up had to go to
his bank he told her, two weeks in bed it stunk like a pig sty. Paid his bill
but didn’t enter their room, he was cured of love based on sex alone
poem by Oskar Hansen
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